Executive Compensation Benchmarking: What the 2025 Data Actually Shows

Compensation transparency in India has improved materially since SEBI mandated clearer disclosures in annual reports, but the data remains stubbornly difficult to interpret without context. Raw numbers stripped of industry, scale, ownership structure, and performance conditions tell an incomplete story. CXO India Research has spent the past quarter normalising compensation data across 280 companies to produce a more useful benchmarking picture. The headline finding: there is no single Indian executive compensation market. There are at least four distinct markets operating simultaneously, and executives — and the boards that set their pay — need to know which market they are in. Listed large-cap companies operate by one set of norms, dominated by structured variable pay with a growing emphasis on long-term incentive plans tied to TSR. PE-backed companies operate by another: higher fixed cash, shorter performance cycles, and equity structures calibrated to the exit horizon. Founder-led private companies tend to underpay on cash and over-rely on informal equity promises that rarely materialise in the way executives anticipate. And MNC subsidiaries navigate a fourth market, constrained by global grading frameworks that often misalign with Indian market rates. The most consistent source of compensation-related leadership loss that CXO India observes is not quantum — it is structure. Executives who leave for a competitor are rarely doing so purely for more money. They are leaving because the structure of their compensation was opaque, the performance conditions felt arbitrary, or the equity promise was never properly documented. Companies that invest in transparent, well-structured compensation frameworks lose far fewer people than those that spend more but manage the conversation poorly.